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In the NFL offseason, star running back Saquon Barkley signed a $40 million contract extension with the Philadelphia Eagles. Make no mistake, he earned it after rushing for 2,005 yards in the regular season and helping to bring another Lombardi Trophy to Philadelphia. I’m not alone in thinking this. As one sports writer put the .. MORE
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Economic Theory
Modular housing is gaining prominence as a proposed way to increase the housing supply. This is an approach where the majority of home building is done off-site. Factories will construct entire rooms of a house, including all the wiring and plumbing connections built in. At the final construction site, the actual building process consists of .. MORE
Regulation
A recent post argued that housing affordability is not so bad as it might appear when home prices are adjusted for all relevant factors, such as size, quality, and household income growth. While houses have become more expensive in dollars, they are also significantly bigger and nicer, and the average household has significantly more income. .. MORE
Economic Growth
Tomorrow in the United States is Thanksgiving, the American version of a harvest festival celebrating the bounty of the earth and preparing for the winter ahead. We trace the history of our holiday to a documented 1621 gathering of English Pilgrims and the native Wampanoag tribe in modern-day Plymouth, Massachusetts. The Pilgrims had immigrated from .. MORE
Trade Barriers
In case you missed it, the Trump Administration has been using tariffs under the 1977 International Economic Emergency Powers Act since at least April of this year. The legality of doing so has been questioned and we are now at a point where the Supreme Court has heard oral arguments on the matter. One of .. MORE
Economic Institutions
Political views are often misleadingly discussed as though they span a single left/right spectrum. I want to suggest that a similar mistake gets made when thinking about economic systems and policies. As a corrective, consider that economic systems can be understood along more than one axis or spectrum – and these different axes are often .. MORE
Game Theory
Cooperation is both the most fragile and the most necessary condition of political life. It is fragile because individuals and groups often pursue short-term gains at others’ expense, yet it is essential because no political community endures without mutual accommodation and understanding. Politics, as Aristotle taught, is the art of living together—not the sum of .. MORE
Adam Smith
In the latest EconTalk, “The Economics of Tariffs and Trade (with Doug Irwin)“, May 5, 2025, Russ Roberts interviews one of the top trade economists in the world, Doug Irwin. Doug recently completed an entry titled “Tariffs” for my Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. Early in the interview, he and Russ talk about trade deficits. Like .. MORE
Fiscal Policy
Valerie A. Ramey of the Hoover Institution has a new NBER paper that examines the impact of lump sum transfer payments on aggregate demand. Here is the abstract: This paper re-evaluates the effectiveness of temporary transfers in stimulating the macroeconomy, using evidence from four case studies. The rebirth of Keynesian stabilization policy has lingering costs .. MORE
Economic Theory
In his 1980 book, Knowledge and Decisions, Thomas Sowell highlights the importance of social authentication and verification processes. Does this work? Is that a good idea? If it works, it survives. If not, it doesn’t. Over time, we accumulate rules, norms, and practices that make it easier for us to get things done. Some of .. MORE
The Theory of Moral Sentiments, by Adam Smith Relationships between people of different generations make up some of the most meaningful connections life has to offer. They shape deep-seated beliefs, goals, and priorities. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments [TMS], Adam Smith describes the human actor as one who is guided by relational experiences. Do .. MORE
A Liberty Classics Book Review of Universal Economics, by Armen Alchian and William Allen.1 What do you do when economists stop believing in economics? The “dismal science” never merited its dreary epithet, but trends in economics education at the graduate and undergraduate levels could change that. Ph.D. courses are saturated with hyper-mathematical models that are .. MORE
Who defines and enforces property rights? If you are the average person, an undergraduate student, or even a mainstream economics professor, that answer is easy: the government. Look it up! Municipal and county governments determine the deeds to your property and various usage rights including wetland setbacks and easements. State governments create regulations that affect .. MORE
“Coase was unhappy that economists do not study the working of economic systems with all their interrelationships but were content with taking the social system as given.” Even the time of Professor Ronald Coase‘s demise was unconventional. At the age of 102, he had just published a book with Dr. Ning Wang, an associate professor .. MORE
A better comparison you might make is to highly-paid football coaches. As with CEOs, you can't really see what they're doing that adds all the value. Also, like CEOs, there is a whole hierarchy of..
MarkW, November 11